The Scorpio Illusion: A Novel Read online

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “He put it this way, the testosterone syndrome, he called it. A male child in like circumstances might easily write ‘Death to all authority’ and sign his full name, a mark of vengeance for everyone to see, whereas the young female will behave differently, withholding complete information, for she must think ahead to the real vengeance. She must outsmart, not out-muscle her enemies.… Still, she can’t help but put part of herself into the ledger.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” said Cooke, nodding. “But good God—records buried in the ground, cypress trees and backwoods rites of passage through bloodshed … mass executions, beheadings with bayonets, and a child of ten living through it all! Christ, you’re dealing with a totally committed psychopath! She wants only to see heads severed from their bodies and plummeting to the ground, as happened to her parents.”

  “Muerte a toda autoridad,” said the chief of MI-6. “The heads of authority—everywhere.”

  “Yes, I understood the phrase—”

  “I’m afraid you can’t possibly understand the gravity of its relevance.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “For the past several years Bajaratt has lived in the Baaka Valley with the leader of a particularly violent Palestinian faction whose cause she fanatically identified with. Apparently she and her lover were married sometime last spring in one of those under-the-fruit-tree ceremonies. He was killed nine weeks ago in a raid on the beaches of Ashkelon, south of Tel Aviv.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember reading about that,” said Cooke. “Killed to a man, no prisoners.”

  “Do you remember the statement issued worldwide by the remaining members of the faction, namely its new leader?”

  “Something about weapons, I believe.”

  “Exactly. The statement read in part that the Israeli weapons that killed the ‘avenging freedom fighters’ were manufactured in America, England, and France, and that the people whose lands were stolen from them would never forget or forgive the beasts who provided those weapons.”

  “We hear that rot all the time. So what?”

  “So Amaya Bajaratt, adding the nom de guerre The Unforgiving, passed a message to the High Councils in the Baaka Valley; your friends or ex-friends in the Mossad picked it up, thank God. She and her comrades, have dedicated their lives to taking the ‘heads of the four great beasts.’ She herself will be the ‘lightning rod that sends out the signal.’ ”

  “What signal?”

  “As near as the Mossad can determine, it will be the sign for her hidden killers in London, Paris, and Jerusalem to strike. The Israelis believe it’s implicit in the part of the message that says ‘As the vilest of these beasts falls across the great sea, so must the others follow quickly.’ ”

  “The vilest …? Across …? Good Lord, America?”

  “Yes, Officer Cooke, Amaya Bajaratt is on her way to assassinate the President of the United States. That’s her signal.”

  “That’s preposterous!”

  “Her record suggests that it may not be. Professionally, she’s rarely if ever failed. She’s a pathological genius, and these are her final kills, her revenge against all ‘brutal’ authority, but now with the added dimension of a deeply personal motive—the death of her husband. She must be stopped, Geoffrey. Which is why the Foreign Office, with this organization’s full compliance, has decided that you should immediately return to your former post in the Caribbean. In your own words, there’s no one with more expertise.”

  “My God, you’re talking to a sixty-four-year-old man who’s about to retire!”

  “You still have contacts throughout the islands. Where they’ve been altered, we’ll provide an entrée. Frankly, we believe you can make swifter headway than anyone else we know. We’ve got to find her and take her out.”

  “Has it occurred to you, old boy, that even if I left today, by the time I got there she could have skipped to heaven knows where? Forgive me, but the word balmy comes back to me.”

  “As to her ‘skipping,’ ” said the chairman, briefly smiling, “neither the French nor we believe she’ll be going anywhere for a number of days, perhaps a week, even two.”

  “Your crystal balls tell you that?”

  “No, our collective common sense. The enormity of her task, as she sees it, will require a fair degree of planning, involving human, financial, and technical resources, including aircraft. She may be a psychopath, but she’s no fool; she won’t attempt to mount her quest on the U.S. mainland.”

  “So where better than beyond the immediate scrutiny of the federal authorities,” said Cooke grudgingly. “Yet near enough to have access to the offshore banks and onshore personnel.”

  “That’s the way we read it,” agreed the head of MI-6.

  “Why did she pass that message to the Baaka councils, I wonder?”

  “Her Götterdämmerung, perhaps. She wants the glory of her kills. It’s psychologically consistent.”

  “Yes, well, you’ve presented me with a rather irresistible assignment, haven’t you?”

  “I had hoped to.”

  “Took me right through the proper stages, didn’t you? From a distant enigma with a horrible yet fascinating dossier to an immediate crisis. All the right buttons pushed.”

  “Is there another way to do it?”

  “Not if you’re a pro, and you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair if you weren’t.” Cooke rose to his feet, his eyes locked with those of his superior. “And now that you may assume my commitment, I’d like to make a suggestion.”

  “Be my guest, old chap.”

  “I wasn’t entirely candid with you a few minutes ago. I said I still stay in touch with old friends, implying a social correspondence. By and large that’s true, but it’s not complete. Actually, I’ve spent most of my annual holidays in the islands—they do draw you back, you know. And, naturally,” he continued, “former colleagues and new acquaintances of similar backgrounds will get together and reminisce.”

  “Oh, quite naturally.”

  “Yes, well, two years ago I met an American fellow who knows more about the islands than I ever did or ever will. He charters his two yachts out of various marinas from Charlotte Amalie to Antigua. He knows every harbor, every cove and inlet throughout the chain; he has to.”

  “Those are fine credentials, Geoffrey, but hardly the sort—”

  “Please,” interrupted Cooke. “I haven’t finished. To anticipate your objection, he’s a retired officer of U.S. Naval Intelligence. He’s relatively young, early to mid-forties, I’d say, and I’ve no real knowledge of why he left the service, but I gather the circumstances weren’t very pleasant. Still, he could be an asset on this assignment.”

  The chairman of MI-6 leaned forward over his desk, his rigid right hand lagging behind his left. “His name is Tyrell Nathaniel Hawthorne the Third. He’s the son of a professor of American literature at the University of Oregon, and the circumstances of his separation from naval intelligence were very unpleasant, indeed. And, yes, he’d be an enormous asset, but no one in Washington’s intelligence circles can recruit him. They’ve tried strenuously, giving him a lot of background, hoping to change his mind; they can’t move him. He has very little regard for such people, believing as he does that they don’t know the difference between the truth and a lie. He’s told them all to go to hell.”

  “Good Lord!” cried Geoffrey Cooke. “You knew about my holidays, you knew all along. You even knew I’d met him.”

  “A pleasant three-day sail through the Leewards, along with your friend Ardisonne, code name Richelieu.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Come now, Officer Cooke, how can you? Incidentally, former Lieutenant Commander Hawthorne is on his way to the marina in British Gorda, where I suspect he’ll have trouble with his auxiliary engine. Your plane leaves for Anguilla at five o’clock, plenty of time to pack. From there, you and your friend Ardisonne will take a small private aircraft to Virgin Gorda.”
The chairman of MI-6, Special Branch, flashed a brilliant smile. “It should be a splendid reunion.”

  DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Seated around the table in the continuously swept conference room were the secretaries of state and defense, the directors of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the chiefs of Army and Navy Intelligence, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. To the left of each man was his selected aide, a high-level subordinate beyond security reproach. Chairing the meeting was the secretary of state. He spoke.

  “You’ve all gotten the same information I have, so we can dispense with extraneous introductions. There’ll be some of you here who think we’re overreacting, and until this morning, I must admit I would have been counted among you. A lone female terrorist with an obsession to assassinate the President, and thereby trigger the assassinations of the political leaders of Great Britain, France, and Israel, seemed just too farfetched. However, at six o’clock this morning I received a call from our director of the CIA, and then at eleven he called me again, and I began to change my mind. Would you please clarify, Mr. Gillette?”

  “I’ll do my best, Mr. Secretary,” said the portly DCI. “Yesterday our source in Bahrain who monitors the financial transactions from the Baaka Valley was killed an hour after he alerted our undercover contact that a half million dollars had been transferred to Zurich’s Crédit Suisse. The amount wasn’t startling, but when our asset in Zurich tried to reach his own source at the bank, an off-the-books, highly paid source, he couldn’t get anywhere. When later he pressed—anonymously, of course, merely an old friend—he was told that the man had flown to London on business. Later still, our asset returned to his apartment, where there was a message on his answering machine. It was from his source, who certainly wasn’t in London, because he asked, apparently rather desperately, that our man meet him at a café in Dudendorf, a city twenty-odd miles north of Zurich. Our asset drove there but his source never showed up.”

  “What do you make of it?” asked the chief of Army G-2.

  “He was taken out to eliminate the money trail,” answered a burly man with thinning red hair who was seated at the DCI’s left. “That’s a projection, not confirmed,” he added.

  “Based on what?” questioned the secretary of defense.

  “On logic,” the Agency aide continued curtly. “First Bahrain’s killed for passing the initial information, then Zurich builds a London cover so he can get to our asset in Dudendorf away from his usual environs. The Baaka found him and wants to cut off the trail, which it did.”

  “Over a six-figure transfer?” asked the chief of naval intelligence. “That’s a lot of trouble over a minor amount, isn’t it?”

  “Because the amount doesn’t mean doodly,” said the heavyset aide with the puffed face. “It’s who’s on the receiving end, and the whereabouts of whoever that person is; that’s what they’re covering. Also, once the transfer is established as clean, the money could escalate a hundred times over.”

  “Bajaratt,” said the secretary of state. “So she’s begun her journey.… All right, this is the way we’re going to operate, and maximum security is the key. With the exception of the Agency’s radio traffic people, we at this table, and only we, will exchange information as our departments pick it up. Put all your personal office faxes into confidential modes, all telephone calls between ourselves on secure lines. Nothing goes out beyond this circle unless approved by me or the DCI. Even the rumors of such an operation could backfire and create a confusion we don’t need.” There was a hum; it came from the red telephone in front of the secretary of state. He picked it up. “Yes?… It’s for you,” he said, looking at the Agency’s director. Gillette rose from his chair and went to the head of the table; he took the phone and identified himself.

  “I understand,” he said after listening for nearly a minute. He replaced the telephone and stared at his heavyset aide with the thinning red hair. “You’ve got your confirmation, O’Ryan. Our man in Zurich was found in the Spitzplatz, shot twice through the head.”

  “They’re making sure that bitch’s ass is covered,” said the CIA analyst named O’Ryan.

  2

  The tall, unshaven man in white sailing shorts and black tank shirt, his skin burned to a deep bronze by the tropic sun, raced across the walkway and up the pier containing slips for the powerboats. He reached the end of the wooden planks and shouted at the two men on an incoming skiff.

  “What the hell do you mean, I’ve got a leak in the auxiliary? I used it in dead air and it was perfectly fine!”

  “Look, mate,” replied a British mechanic, his voice weary as Tyrell Hawthorne grabbed the rope thrown at him. “I don’t give a shit if it’s a newborn babe of a motor. You ain’t got an ounce of oil in your crankcase; it’s all soiling our lovely little refuge here. Now, if you want to take that mother out, and you hit some more deaders, go right ahead and blow the engine. But I’m sure as hell gonna make my report. I ain’t gonna be responsible for your stupidity.”

  “All right, all right,” said Hawthorne, grabbing the man’s hand as he climbed up the ladder to the dock. “What do you figure?”

  “Rotted gaskets and two ruined cylinders, Tye.” The mechanic turned and secured the second line around a pylon so his companion could climb up on the dock. “How many times have I told you, laddie, you’re too good with the clouds and the windies. You’ve got to use your metals more; they dry out in this fuckin’ sun! Now, haven’t I told you that a couple of dozen times?”

  “Yes, Marty, you have. I can’t deny it.”

  “You couldn’t! And with the prices you charge, you sure ain’t worried about fuel costs, that even I can figure.”

  “It’s not the money,” protested the skipper. “Except for prolonged dead spots, the charters like to sail, you know that. When can you have it fixed—a couple of hours?”

  “Over your life, Tye-Boy. Try tomorrow noon—if I get the proper bore grinders flown in from Saint T. in the morning.”

  “Damn it! I’ve got some good repeats on board, and they expect to hit Tortola tonight.”

  “Get ’em a few rum-punchies, Gordie style, and get ’em rooms at the club. They’ll never know the difference.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” said Hawthorne, turning and starting down the pier. “A hundred-and-ten-proof Overton coming up.” The charter captain hastened his pace past the slips.

  “Sorry, mate,” Martin the mechanic said to himself as he watched his friend turn left on the walkway. “I hate to do this to you, but I’ve got my orders.”

  Darkness enveloped the Caribbean. The hour was late as Captain Tyrell Hawthorne, sole owner of Olympic Charters, Ltd., U.S. Virgin Islands Registry, led his clients, first one couple and then the other, to their accommodations at the yacht club’s beach hotel. Their rooms were not what either twosome expected to wake up in, but going to sleep was no problem; the bartender had made certain of that. So Tye Hawthorne returned to the deserted open-air bar on the beach and rendered his thanks to the man behind it in more concrete terms. He gave the black bartender fifty American dollars.

  “Hey, Tye-Boy, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Then why are you gripping it so tightly in your fist?”

  “Instinct, mon. You can have it back.”

  They both laughed; it was a ritual.

  “How’s business, Captain?” asked the bartender, pouring Hawthorne a glass of his customary white wine.

  “Not bad, Roger. Both our boats are chartered, and if my idiot brother can find his way back to Red Hook in Saint T., we could even make a profit this year.”

  “Hey, mon, I like your brother. He’s a funny guy.”

  “Oh, he’s a real cartoon, Roge. Did you know that kid is a doctor?”

  “What, mon? Alla times he comes here, I got aches and pains all over me, and I coulda asked him?”

  “No, not that kind of doctor,” broke in Tyrell. “He has a doctorate d
egree in literature, just like our dad.”

  “He don’ fix bones and aches? So what good is it?”

  “That’s what he said. He said he broke his ass for eight years to get the damn thing and ended up making less money than a garbage collector in San Francisco. He was fed up, you know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” replied the bartender. “Five years ago I hauled fish off the charters and cleaned the throw-ups of the tourists an’ put ’em to bed when they drunk. No life, mon! So I bettered myself and learned how to get ’em drunk.”

  “Good move.”

  “Bad move, Tye-Boy,” said Roger, suddenly whispering and reaching below the counter. “Two mon walkin’ down from the path. They lookin’ fer somebody, and you are the only somebody here. Also, I got a feeling—I don’ like ’em; they keep checkin’ their jackets, their sleeves, an’ they walk too slow. But don’ worry, I got my gun.”

  “Hey, come on, Roge, what are you talking about?” Hawthorne turned on the barstool. “Geoff!” he cried. “Is that you, Cooke?… And Jacques, you too? What the hell are you guys doing here?… Put away the hardware, Roger, these are old friends of mine.”

  “I’ll put it away when I learn they got no hardware of their own.”

  “Hey, fellas, this is another old friend—and the islands have been a little rough lately. Just hold out your hands and tell him you haven’t got any weapons, okay?”

  “How could we possibly have any weapons?” said Geoffrey Cooke contemptuously. “We both flew over on international flights where metal detectors are very much in evidence.”

  “Mais oui!” added Ardisonne, code name Richelieu.

  “They’re okay,” said Hawthorne, leaping off the barstool and shaking hands with both older men. “Remember our sail through the—oh, oh, why are you here? I thought you were both retired.”

  “We have to talk, Tyrell,” said Cooke.

  “Immediately,” said Ardisonne. “There is no time to waste.”